My Mom's Apple Cake...

 When I was a child growing up in a small town in Ohio...this is the time of year my dad would take us apple picking.  All that I remember of it was that it was so much fun.  We would wander through the rows of apple trees and play while my dad and mom did the serious apple picking.  The house that I grew up in was the same house that my dad grew up in and there was a very cold room in the basement that my parents called "the fruit cellar".   I think it was my mom's official pantry.  There were jars of stuff and bottles of stuff and cans of stuff and bins of things...I think onions and potatoes and my mom kept the big basket of apples there after our day of apple picking.  My mom would always get one of us to run down to the "fruit cellar" for a can of whatever she needed when she was cooking.   So when my mom handed one of us a bowl and asked us to get apples from the "fruit cellar" we knew she was making apple cake.  My mom was an amazing cook but she never really liked to bake...on the rare instances that she did she loved making apple cake.  I only remember having it in the fall.  My mom always made it in a clear glass 13 by 9 inch pan.  She never put nuts in it because she knew none of her kids liked nuts.  And it was the best apple cake in the world.  When my mom died...this recipe was sort of lost.  Whenever I yearned to make some of the foods my mom always made...I would just call her and she would read it off to me, I would write it down and then misplace it.  So as much as I wanted to make this cake I had no real recipe for it.  My sister Paula thought she had it but it was not the right one...I searched on line everywhere but none of the recipes were like the one my mom used...until yesterday when I read Cora Cooks...a food blog that I love to read.  Cora posted this really simple apple cake recipe and I knew it was the right one.  My mom threw everything in one big bowl and mixed it up, baked it and it was heavenly.  My mom always dusted the top with powdered sugar or she would let one of us do that with her supervision.  She would put it in our lunches and we would have it for an after school snack and our house would smell cinnamony and wonderful.  

So...I am making it today...in a 13 by 9 inch pan...in my mom's big bowl...and I will dust it with powdered sugar all on my own this time...but memories of her just surge through my soul.